Mohammed Makram Balaawi Series

Dar al-Hafiz

In a distant forest, a bear lived with his friends the fox and the jackal in a house made of pine logs.
The bear was big and fat, and the fox and jackal were small and scrawny.
The bear ate too much and didn't work or even clean the house, while the fox and jackal worked all the time to earn a living, and the bear hardly left them anything to eat.
One day the fox said to the jackal: "How long will the bear eat what we earn and we have nothing to eat, we must put an end to this situation."
In the evening, before returning home, they ate all the food they had collected that day, and then went back to bed.
The bear came to check on their health, and they told him that they had contracted an incurable infectious disease and could no longer make a living.
When the bear realized that he would have nothing to eat, he decided one morning to take the broken bread that was left in the house and look for another place to find food.
The fox and jackal were happy that their plan had worked and hoped that the bear would never return to them.
The bear walked through the forest looking for something to eat, but he couldn't find anything to satisfy his hunger. Whenever he saw something to eat, he had to climb a tree, go down a valley, or climb a mountain to get it, but he wasn't used to getting tired to get food, so he preferred to stay hungry.
Finally, he couldn't walk any further and fell to the ground out of hunger, leaned his back against a tree, thought about how he had gotten himself into this situation, and, out of hunger, fell asleep. When he woke up, it was evening, and he saw a light coming from a tree not far away, so he decided to go there to find food or a place to sleep for the night.
When he entered the tree, he found a big pot on a bunch of stones and a fire was burning underneath it. The bear was very happy to see the pot and said to himself that he would finally have a hot meal.
The bear called out to the owner of the house and a faint voice answered him from the corner of the place, and when the bear approached he saw an old fox sleeping in a small bed.
The bear asked the old fox: "Do you have any food, good old lady, I'm very hungry?"
The old woman replied in a faint voice: "No." I am sick and cannot bring food, all I have is some herbs from the bottom of this tree and a little salt in this boiling water."
The bear said enthusiastically, "It's okay, I can eat anything. "It's okay, I can eat anything." He took a bite of the soup with a large wooden spoon.
The bear couldn't eat the soup, so he spat and coughed violently and said, "I don't know how you eat this food, old woman."
The old woman said, "I don't know. "If you want, you can take the hoe in the corner of the house and get some of the vegetables I grew when I was healthy, in my field near the river."
"It's okay," said the bear lazily, "I'm tired now, I'll sleep tonight and maybe go tomorrow morning."
The bear could not sleep all night, he was very hungry and took out of his pocket some crumbs of dry bread that he had been saving and ate them in vain.
In the morning the bear couldn't bear the pain of hunger, so he picked up the hoe and went to the field near the river, where he dug some onions out of the ground and took them to the old man's house.
On the way, he sat on the riverbank eating a raw onion with the bread crumbs he had with him. The crumbs fell into the water, and the fish gathered on it, and with lightning speed the bear extracted a large fish from the water, and took it to the old woman's house, almost flying with joy.
The old woman added the cleaned fish and chopped onions to the water in the pot and put a little salt on it.
When the bear ate the food, he was so happy that he ate everything in the pot and then fell asleep.
When he woke up he was so hungry that he searched for the food and remembered that he had eaten it all before he fell asleep, he slept for three days straight.
This time he brought onions and potatoes from the field and caught two fish, the old woman ate and he ate all he wanted.
The third time he brought carrots too, the food became more enjoyable and tasty the more effort he put into it, and he brought other kinds of vegetables.
As winter approached and the bear plucked vegetables from the field and caught fish from the river, the old woman said to him, "You'd better pluck all the vegetables from the field and catch and dry some fish to store for the winter."
After the bear finished gathering the vegetables and drying the fish he had caught, the old woman told him that he was a young and strong animal, and that he should plant the field this time himself. The bear knew nothing about farming but decided to learn from the old woman and try himself.
The bear planted a large area of the field, many times more than the old woman, many kinds of vegetables, and a large area of wheat and corn.
The bear and the old woman lived through the cold winter on the food they had gathered, and when summer came, the vegetables were ripe and the wheat was golden, and when the bear harvested it, he had a large amount of vegetables and wheat.
"What are we going to do with all these vegetables and grains?" The bear asked the old woman.
"Sell it and buy the things we need for next year," the old woman replied.
When the bear sold his crop in the village, he became rich, so his old friends the fox and the jackal approached him and welcomed him into their home and asked him if he had found a treasure, "I have found the best treasure in this life, which is work. I thought you were dead, anyway, thank you. I will live with the one who taught me the value of work and to be a rich and respected bear."
The bear built a beautiful house with a wooden fence decorated with flowers for the old woman in the middle of the forest, and lived with her happily until the day she passed away and the bear had a family with a wife and wonderful children.

Muhammad Makram
5/27/2009
Dammam

Mohamed Makram © 2009